Viral content has come a long way since kitten videos and
epic fails. That isn't to say those topics aren't still staples of
Internet success, but the stories that were most popular in 2013 showed
that we're willing to think a little bit deeper than squee and slapstick
humor. In fact, looking back at some of HuffPost's most shared stories
of the past 12 months tells us a lot about ourselves and the things we
love enough to tell our friends. The 13 story lines below show exactly
what it took to break the Internet in 2013:

2. So we turned to those same networks to share our amazement at real-life talent...
Our digital lives are filled with banalities, and we only rarely
witness impressive feats of excellence in our real lives, which makes
the Internet a great place to remind us that many humans are pretty damn
good at what they do best. A capella performances were a clear
standout, like this one by Florida State's AcaBelles, which capitalized on the smash-hit success of Lorde's "Royals."

While many would be deathly afraid of the procedure she was about to
undergo, Cohan -- and her medical team -- danced with genuine delight as
Beyonce's "Get Me Bodied" played in the room. Her display of bravery
gained worldwide attention and praise. You can track Cohan's recovery here.

4. We understood that there are some people who deserve to be pointed and laughed at...
When a filmmaker launched a campaign to give a figurative groin-kick
to Abercrombie & Fitch, the Internet said "yes, please," giving nearly 1.3 million Facebook "likes" to our article on the push.
In his video, Greg Karber explained his plan to give A&F clothes to
the homeless community as a response to the company CEO's super douchey
comments about their products only being meant for cool, skinny,
good-looking people.

8. And hilarious commentary on the things we put ourselves through willingly.
Apparently a lot of people can commiserate with a nightmare
experience at Whole Foods, which, for comedian Kelly Maclean, happened
during a rather typical visit to the store. In her yuppy anecdote that struck far too close to home for many of us, Maclean made us all wonder why we continue to make regular visits to the "land of hemp milk and honey."

10. And with those little bundles of joy and noise that sometimes show up as a result.
Babies are a constant source of joy, even when they're not so happy themselves. While we'll never know for sure if this baby was actually crying at her mother's singing -- it could have been gas -- we were all happy to believe that she was.

LONDON (AP) — A well-known privacy advocate has given the
public an unusually explicit peek into the intelligence world's tool
box, pulling back the curtain on the National Security Agency's arsenal
of high-tech spy gear.

Independent journalist and security expert Jacob
Appelbaum on Monday told a hacker conference in Germany that the NSA
could turn iPhones into eavesdropping tools and use radar wave devices
to harvest electronic information from computers, even if they weren't
online.
Appelbaum told hundreds of computer experts gathered at
Hamburg's Chaos Communications Conference that his revelations about
the NSA's capabilities "are even worse than your worst nightmares."

"What I am going to show you today is wrist-slittingly depressing," he said.
Even though in the past six months there have been an
unprecedented level of public scrutiny of the NSA and its methods,
Appelbaum's claims — supported by what appeared to be internal NSA
slideshows — still caused a stir.

One of the slides described how the NSA can plant
malicious software onto Apple Inc.'s iPhone, giving American
intelligence agents the ability to turn the popular smartphone into a
pocket-sized spy.
"Apple has never worked with the NSA to create a backdoor in any of our products, including iPhone," the company said in a statement to AllThingsD. "Additionally, we have been unaware of this alleged NSA program targeting our products."

Another slide showcased a futuristic-sounding device
described as a "portable continuous wave generator," a remote-controlled
device which — when paired with tiny electronic implants — can bounce
invisible waves of energy off keyboards and monitors to see what is
being typed, even if the target device isn't connected to the Internet.

A third slide showcased a piece of equipment called
NIGHTSTAND, which can tamper with wireless Internet connections from up
to 8 miles (13 kilometers) away.

An NSA spokeswoman, Vanee Vines, said that she wasn't
aware of Appelbaum's presentation, but that in general should would not
comment on "alleged foreign intelligence activities."

"As we've said before, NSA's focus is on targeting the
communications of valid foreign intelligence targets — not on
collecting and exploiting a class of communications or services that
would sweep up communications that are not of bona fide foreign
intelligence interest to the U.S. government."
The documents included in Appelbaum's presentation were first published by German magazine Der Spiegel on Sunday and Monday.

Appelbaum and Der Spiegel have both played an important
role in the disclosures of NSA leaker Edward Snowden, but neither has
clarified whether the most recent set of slides came from Snowden.

Arizona inmates saved 22-year-old female guard from jail cell attack.
Rachel Harris, a rookie detention officer at Lower Buckeye Jail in
Maricopa County, Ariz., was conducting a routine cell check in June when
inmate Bobby Ruiz allegedly jumped on her back and bit off a piece of
her ear, Fox 10 reported.

According to Harris and jail surveillance video, inmates rushed
upstairs to aid Harris, peeling Ruiz off the 22-year-old guard. Inmates
Ricky Shillingford and Andrew Davis were the first to come to Harris’
aid.

"He had her in a chokehold, I saw the blood was coming from her ears," Shillingford, who broke his hand in the scuffle, told Fox 10.

"I seen her on the floor, crunched over, hunched over. I snatched him
off of her, and then he took a swing at me and went back toward her,"
Davis said.

Harris told Fox 10
that she knew the inmates were there to help her. After the attack, her
ear wrapped in gauze, Harris thanked the inmates who rescued her.

"I just want to say thank you to those of you who did help me. I
really don't know if I would have came out with anything more if you
guys didn't help me, so thank you," Harris said.

"Right is right and wrong is wrong," Davis told Fox 10. "We make mistakes to get in here. But hey, if you can correct your mistakes, why not?"

Washington state inmates rescued three three boys from drowning in Salmon Creek.

KPTV - FOX 12
When three brothers fell into the cold water of Salmon Creek in
southwest Washington in January, three inmates from Larch Corrections
Center conducting supervised maintenance at a nearby park jumped into the water to save them.

"Just 'cause we're incarcerated doesn't mean we're bad people," 28-year-old Jon Fowler, one of the inmates, told KPTV.
"We made some bad choices in our lives, but we're still, we're just
like everybody else. We're just paying our debt for what we did wrong."

The boys, ages 8, 10 and 16, fell into the 45-degree water after
their canoe capsized. As soon as the inmates spotted the boys in the
water beside their overturned canoe, the three men dived into the creek
and fished out the boys one by one.

“I don’t think I was thinking at all,” 37-year-old Nelson Pettis, another inmate involved in the rescue, told The Columbian.

The third inmate, 29-year-old Larry Bohn, made numerous trips into
the water, rescuing the oldest boy before diving back in to help Pettis
with the others. Once the boys were on dry ground, both Pettis and Bohn
wrapped their shirts around them to keep them warm until the rescue
crews arrived.
“He looked real bad,” Bohn told The Columbian referring to the 8-year-old. “They were saying, 'thank you' repeatedly. They just seemed really scared.”

Along with the three brothers, two of the inmates were taken to a nearby hospital for mild hypothermia, according to Chief Jerry Green of Clark County Fire District 6.

"I think we did something that any good person would do," Fowler told KPTV. You see three helpless kids in a river, you help. That's what you do."

Exonerated prisoners started nonprofit detective agency to free other innocent inmates.
After serving almost 13 years of a Texas life sentence, Christopher Scott was exonerated of murder after another suspect in the case confessed to the crime in 2009.

In an April interview with WUNC-FM at the Innocence Network Conference in Charlotte, N.C., Scott reflected on his battle to prove his innocence.

“I think it’s the first time I actually cried, when [my lawyer] told
me I had a million-to-one chance to make it," Scott said. "I went back
to him the next day and I told him, ‘You gave me a million-to-one chance
to make it. I’m gonna be that one out of the million.”

While Scott’s case hinged on mistaken identity, others have been cleared by DNA analysis years after they were convicted.

Scott, now owner of his own men’s apparel store, Christopher’s Men’s Wear, has united with dozens of
other exonerated former prisoners in Dallas County to launch the House
of Renewed Hope, a nonprofit amateur detective agency that helps free
wrongfully convicted inmates.
The House of Renewed Hope also lobbies Texas legislators for greater
compensation for ex-inmates who have been exonerated and increased
access to public services, including health care.

Tech-savvy Oklahoma inmates developed computer software that may save their state millions.
A handful of tech-savvy inmates at the Joseph Harp Correctional
Center in Lexington, Okla., got together to create data-collection
software that three state lawmakers said may save Oklahoma millions of
dollars a year, according to The Oklahoman.

The program, which has been in place for the past two years, was
initially developed to prevent prisoners from receiving multiple meals
per dining session. Data collected by the system also showed that the
food vendor, Sysco, was charging varying amounts for the same product at
different facilities, which quickly became a point of concern for state
lawmakers, The Oklahoman reports.

If the software was implemented in correctional facilities statewide,
the program could save the state almost $20 million every year, Bobby
Cleveland, an Oklahoma state representative and chairman of the state
House Public Safety Committee, told The Washington Post in October.

"It’s all done by the direction of the supervisor, one of these guys
who’s kind of, what do you call it, thinking outside the box.”

Two of the three inmates, whose names were withheld by Oklahoma
Corrections Department spokesman Jerry Massie and state lawmakers, are
serving time for murder and sexual offenses, according to The Oklahoman.

Washington state prison inmates prepared rescue cats for adoption.

14 News, WFIE, Evansville, Henderson, Owensboro
The Silver Star Unit at Larch Corrections Center in Washington state
offers qualified inmates one of two cat adoption programs in the
Washington State Department of Corrections, 14 WFIE reports.
As of February, the inmate adoption program, coordinated with the
West Columbia Gorge Humane Society, has hosted five cats, allowing
inmates to feed, care for and socialize maladapted felines until they
are ready for adoption.

To qualify for the program, inmates must undergo an interview with
prison staff, maintain a positive behavioral record with the Department
of Corrections and have no violent crimes or animal abuse in their
history.

One inmate at Larch Correction Center, Jerry Warfield, spoke to 14 WFIE about Jinx, a skittish cat previously living with hoarders.

"In a situation like this, normally, typically you don't have a lot
of responsibility, so when you go back to the community, you're not used
to the responsibility, so it kind of overwhelms you," Warfield told 14 WFIE.
"This, it kind of keeps you on track, gives you a sense of
responsibility. It helps build you and prepare you for your release.
“And of course they love you back and it’s always good to feel love. … They don’t judge ya,” Warfield added. Paws in Prison program: Prisoners saved shelter dogs from death row.
In an effort to make dogs more adoptable and provide rehabilitation skills to inmates, nationwide programs like Arkansas’ “Paws in Prison”
pair incarcerated individuals with dogs that would otherwise be
euthanized because of unmanageable or dangerous behavioral issues. The
training program tasks qualified prisoners with socializing rescue dogs
from shelters and teaching them basic obedience skills in preparation of
adoption.

“I’ve been looking for ways to just -- even if it’s small -- to give
back to society in some way,” James Dulaney, a Tucker Correctional
Facility inmate and Paws for Prison participant in Arkansas, told The Associated Press in June. Dulaney is serving life for murder.

“The dogs have a remarkable impact on offenders, improving offender
behavior and giving offenders incentive to maintain excellent conduct
records,” George A. Lombardi, director of the Missouri Department of
Corrections, told the AP.

Of the nearly 4,000 firefighters dispatched to battle one of the largest wildfires in California history, 673 were male and female state prison inmates.

California's voluntary Conservation Camps program, begun
by the state Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation and the
Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, allows inmates to serve
their communities while providing cooperative agencies with an
additional trained workforce for emergencies, including fires, floods
and earthquakes.

"They are in the thick of it," Capt. Jorge Santana of the corrections department told NBC. "They work 24-hour shifts. They sleep in tents at base camp. They work side-by-side with other firefighters."
Inmates must undergo intensive two-week physical training in addition
to two weeks of fire safety and suppression techniques training.

"A lot of people think you pull that fire engine up and just pull a hose out and fight fire," Cal Fire Capt. Mike Mohler told National Geographic.
"We're talking inmates who hike miles and miles just to get where
they're going to start, and then cut line all through the day."

Qualified inmates, who are meticulously screened, medically cleared
and must have no history of violent crimes, earn $1.45 to $3.90 per day
for projects ranging from fire breaks to flood protection, according to
the California Conservation Camps website.

The California Conservation Program saves state taxpayers an average of $80 million annually and helps inmates return to society when their sentences end.

“A lot of these guys come in and have never held a job, never had any
self-worth,” Correctional Lt. L.A. von Savoye, public information
officer at the Sierra Conservation Center, told Time.
“Within a very short time their mentality changes. They take pride in
what they’re doing. They’re giving back to their communities. It gives
them purpose.”

There are currently 42 adult and two juvenile Conservation Camps in California, with nearly 4,000 inmate participants.

Inmates grew new lives through prison gardens program.
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Prisoners have been growing vegetables, fruits and flowers in prison yards across the country, helping them gain vocational landscaping skills and a peaceful outlet for frustrations.
“We believe that everybody has a heart and everybody has a chance for transformation,” Beth Waitkus, director of the Insight Garden Program at California's San Quentin state prison, told ABC.
A 46-year-old career criminal named Bernard has been an active member
of Willard Cybulski Correctional Institution’s gardening efforts in
Enfield, Conn., according to ABC News.
“I get a sense of peace and a sense of serenity being that I’m in a
hostile environment at times and then coming out here to pick these
vegetables. It brings calmness to me,” Bernard, who, like other inmates interviewed by ABC, didn't give his last name.

Dennis, a San Quentin inmate serving 22 years for burglary, told ABC
the program has had shocking effects on him, including reduced
aggression.

“I’m sitting next to this guy that I would have been fighting on some
other yard. It really amazed me that I could actually prune plants and
dig in soil,” the budding expert on soil composition told ABC. “It really touched me.”

In Connecticut, all 18 state prisons have
garden programs, none of which cost taxpayers a dime. In 2012, the
state’s prisons yielded more than 35,000 pounds of produce for
prisoners, which saved Connecticut taxpayers $20,000 in prison costs.
Surplus food from prison garden programs is donated to charities.

“We give 25 percent of what we pick back to the community and that’s
the most fulfilling thing, that I’m helping someone,” Bernard told ABC.
“Because in my life, I have taken in trouble. So, to me, it’s almost
like paying back a debt to be able to pick something and be able to give
back to others.”
“I’ve been in and out since I’ve been 15, and this is the first time
I’ve done something like this,” Rasheed, another San Quentin inmate, told ABC. “I can connect spiritually with something as simple as garden. … To me that was different.”

According to Connecticut's 2011 Annual Recidivism Report,
recidivism of state convicts after their release from prison approaches
60 percent. But San Quentin garden prisoners see a recidivism rate of
less than 10 percent, and none of Connecticut’s garden graduates have
returned to jail since their release, Waitkus told ABC.

The Last Mile prison program has been transforming inmates into tech-savvy entrepreneurs.
In 1995, Chrisfino Kenyatta Leal
was convicted of possessing a firearm after two previous armed robbery
convictions. Under California’s three strikes law, he was given a prison
sentence of 25 years to life. Nineteen years later, California Prop 36
allowed him to qualify for resentencing. Leal was released from prison
in July, according to Business Insider.

While imprisoned, Leal was one of dozens of inmates enrolled in The Last Mile,
an entrepreneurship program that provides qualified inmates with the
technological skills they need to get jobs upon release. To qualify,
inmates must apply, provide peer recommendations and undergo
administrator review. The six-month program, founded by Silicon Valley
investors Chris Redlitz and wife Beverly Parenti, includes twice-weekly
training sessions on social media, which covers the basics of Twitter,
blogging and Quora, a question-and-answer website that has allowed inmates to enter the world of social media through volunteer intermediaries.

"Before The Last Mile, I was going to be an electrician" if paroled, Leal told Business Insider.
"But when the program came along, I realized there's a whole world out
there I wasn't aware of. When I was incarcerated, the Internet was just
starting to take off, so I didn't really get too much of an
understanding for it. Once I started taking classes through The Last
Mile sessions, all of those questions were answered."

Upon his release in June, Leal became a full-time intern at tech
company RocketSpace. After four months, he was hired as a full-time
operations associate, Business Insider reports.
Since The Last Mile’s 2011 launch, six program alumni have been
released from prison and have secured employment. Currently, 30 inmates
are enrolled in The Last Mile, according to Business Insider.

Vermont inmates helped families of fallen war heroes.

WCAX.COM Local Vermont News, Weather and Sports-
Harley Time, an eight-month class offered through the Vermont
Department of Corrections, teaches inmates vocational auto mechanic
skills, including how to strip, restore and customize motorcycles. Each
year, the inmates at St. Alban’s Correctional Facility in Vermont donate
their completed projects to charities as fundraisers.

"I'm an auto body technician by trade, so I can take that to the
table in here and share that particular skill with them," inmate and
program mentor Mark King told WCAX.
In May, St. Alban’s Harley Time participants chose to donate two
Harley-Davidson motorcycles to Vermont Fallen Families, which supports
people who have lost loved ones in battle.
Marion Gray, the Vermont Fallen Families president, lost a son in
2004 to the Iraq war and was deeply moved by the inmates’ tribute,
sparking her first trip to a prison to personally thank the inmates.

"I wanted to hear in their own words why they chose us," Gray told WCAX,
fighting back tears as she hugged each participant individually.
"They're wonderful kids regardless of the circumstances, in my book, for
wanting to do this."

The inmates custom-designed the motorcycles with military blue paint
and 42 gold stars to symbolize each Vermont service member lost in
battle.
"We know that your son, Jamie, is on here along with his fallen brothers and sisters. So God bless them," King told Gray.

Two Virginia Beach prisoners saved a fellow inmate from suicide attempt.
Virginia Beach inmates Antonio Tabron and Kwaku Acheampong were
eating breakfast one Sunday morning in March when they noticed fellow
inmate Donnie Bullard preparing to hang himself from a bed sheet in his
cell, according to WAVY.com.

Tabron and Acheampong called nearby guards for assistance as they talked Bullard out of suicide.
"I remember getting up on the table," Bullard, who had been imprisoned for a month, told WAVY. "I told one of them I was going to hang myself and he said, 'Not here.' Then, I went and got on my bed."
Tabron and Acheampong declined to be interviewed, but Bullard spoke with WAVY to publicly thank the inmates who saved his life.

"I felt relieved that they had come," Bullard told WAVY. "I thank them for what they've done, stopping me. It could have been worse.”

Bullard is incarcerated for simple assault on law enforcement and
driving while intoxicated. Acheampong is serving time for simple
assault on law enforcement, damaged property and disorderly conduct.
Tabron is imprisoned for rape.

Florida prisoners saved a 64-year-old prison guard from being choked to death by violent inmate.

This incident occurred in November 2009, but the exceptional actions of these inmates warrants renewed applause.
Deputy Ken Moon was the lone guard on duty at the Orient Road Jail in
Tampa, Fla., when he was violently attacked by inmate Douglas Burden,
as revealed by the jail surveillance video.
Burden, jailed for drug dealing and drunk driving, placed the
64-year-old guard in what officials later called a “rear naked choke,” a
martial arts strangle that cuts off the blood to the brain.
Within moments, inmate Jerry Dieguez Jr., serving time for armed home
invasion, ran to Moon’s defense, punching Burden in the face. More
inmates flooded the room to help in Moon’s rescue. As some inmates
peeled Burden off the guard, others used Moon's radio to call for help,
according to theDaily Mail.

Col. James Previtera, commander of Hillsborough County's Department of Detention Services, told reporters that the inmates "saved the deputy's life," describing the attack as “fast” and “violent.”
“The response of the inmates in this case, I think, speaks volumes as
to the fact that we treat these men and women ... in our facilities
with a lot of respect," Previtera added.
When reporters asked Previtera why the inmates rushed to Moon’s aid, he relayed the inmates’ response: “He was a good guy and they liked him.”

The Pew Research center has updated their terrific graphic showing how each generation of Americans have voted, relative to the rest of the country, over the last two decades:

As you can see, those who came of voting age under FDR, Nixon, Clinton,
Bush 43 and Obama have tended to vote more Democratic compared to the
nation at large, while Americans who reached majority while Truman, Ike,
JFK, LBJ, Ford, Carter, Reagan, and Bush 41 have leaned Republican.
Most cohorts have remained fairly consistent in their choices over time,
though that 1960s contingent—perhaps surprisingly, or perhaps not—seems
to have grown more conservative in recent years.
One thing this chart doesn't show, though, is intensity of
preference. So Clinton kids like myself have typically gone for
Democrats, but by what margin? For that, you have to drill down further,
and Pew offers the example of our most recent presidential election,
the 2012 contest between Barack Obama and Mitt Romney. Head below the
fold for another compelling graphic.

The headline on Pew's chart here references the Kennedy generation,
thanks to the recent burst of interest in JFK on the occasion of the
50th anniversary of his assassination, but it offers data for all age
groups:

So as you can see, my gang, the Clinton Gen X-ers, supported Obama by 10
percent, second only to the youngsters who backed him by an outsize 22
percent. The only other cohort to pull the lever for Obama, as you might
have guessed from the first graph, is the Nixon group, though I suspect
that New Dealers did as well. (It appears there simply aren't enough of
them left, sadly, for Pew to study in a statistically meaningful way.)
The remaining four age brackets all went for Romney, as you'd expect,
though they, too, have different intensity levels as well.
The question, as always, is whether these patterns will hold as we
march toward the future, or whether they'll change. If they stay true to
form, as they largely have for some time now, that's good news for
Democrats, as the oldest Americans are some of the most conservative in
the nation while the youngest Americans tilt strongly blue.
While we're at it, take the poll below and let us know which generation you belong to!

He was in an unusual position, he owned a small brownstone-like apartment building in Mid-Manhattan and had become a hoarder since his divorce some years earlier.

He remained actively engaged as a real estate agent, though..

I was working for him very cheaply, and so I guess he figured I couldn't be bothered to worry about so I was in his apartment on a number of occasions.

The effect was incredible. Of what was a three bedroom apartment with a living room and dining room, only the dining room and kitchen were like a normal space, and the dining room had a bed in it and his work station as well as piles of papers.

I won't begin to catalog the kinds of objects he had hoarded--these photos do that better than I could.

The Homes of Hoarders

When photographer Paula Salischiker
saw an American TV series about extreme hoarders, she felt
instinctively that the way they were being portrayed wasn’t fair. “They
are usually shown under a very obscure light, like objects themselves,”
Salischiker said via email. “I somehow felt there was something else
beyond these stories of horror portrayed with the question of, ‘How can
anyone live like that?’ in mind.”

In the 2½ years since she started her series, “The Art of Keeping,”
Salischiker has been invited to photograph six homes in London and Essex
after attending a self-help group for hoarders and posting an ad on a
website dealing with hoarding habits. “The process of finally visiting
their homes was difficult, as they accepted with a lot of energy and
then became a bit worried about my possible presence there,” Salischiker
said. “For a hoarder, sharing their space can be a menace. Many of them
also suffer from other mental health conditions, so letting someone
into their homes is something they might have not done for years. I felt
privileged to enter their lives and welcomed at their homes, despite
the clutter.”

Originally, Salischiker wanted to take portraits of the hoarders in
their homes. But although her subjects recognized themselves as
hoarders, their families, friends, or colleagues often didn’t know about
their condition. Anonymity, therefore, became essential, and
Salischiker’s photographs came to mostly focus on the clutter rather
than the hoarders themselves. “I also realized their objects constituted
them, formed their identities, and were themselves in a way. Showing
the objects they felt close to, depicting this bond with the material
world around them might portray them better than if I showed their
faces,” Salischiker said.

Collected fallen hair, London

Paula Salischiker

Kitchen, London

Paula Salischiker

Kitchen bookshelves, Essex

Paula Salischiker

A dry fruit found in the fridge, London

Paula Salischiker

Talking with her subjects helped Salischiker learn more about the
suffering involved with having their condition. “Hoarding takes a lot of
energy and time from the people who suffer it, and it is tiring both
mentally and physically. There is the constant moving of items, carrying
them, worrying about them. There are also health hazards: The gases
emanated by accumulated garbage are toxic and can cause fires. It is not
a mental illness that never materializes: They face constantly the
challenge of being surrounded by that which constitutes their main
problem.”

For Salischiker, photographing in severely cluttered spaces, in which
the smallest item can hold great significance, was a challenge. “I felt
worried I would break something really important for them, or step on a
precious, irreplaceable item,” Salischiker said. “Nothing is a detail
for a hoarder, and that is the main thing with this condition: They
cannot distinguish and establish the importance of the objects around
them. Any sort of hierarchy is lost. I took very little equipment with
me to their home. I wanted to interfere as little as possible with the
space.”

Interior of a house packed with art, London

Paula Salischiker

Bed covered with bags of newspapers and unopened presents, London

Paula Salischiker

Salischiker’s series is ongoing, and she plans to photograph hoarders
in Uruguay next. “The very fact that the project can be continued in
South America proves that the condition is not only related to the
wealth of a country or consumerism. Hoarding is … more common than we
think,” she said.

The Census Bureau released a slew of data on state-to-state migration recently showing that Americans have become significantly less mobile
than they used to be, with just 11.7 percent moving in the last year,
near historic lows. It's not much different from the record low of 11.6,
set in 2011.

Even when people move, they aren't moving far, with a
majority staying in the same county and less than a quarter moving more
than 500 miles.

All that points to how mobility hasn't really recovered from the Great Recession. You might remember The Grapes of Wrath
and assume that economic dislocation spurs more people to move in
search of work, but that isn't the case, which can in fact slow
recovery. Rather than head for parts of the country where the economy is
healthiest, instead people get stuck in place, often thanks to an
underwater mortgage that makes selling unwise, or simply the need to
scrape up thousands of dollars to be able to relocate. Nevertheless,
unemployed people did move more (18.9 percent) than employed persons
(11.9 percent), and persons in poverty moved more than the national
average.

All that data is interesting in itself, but if you're wondering specifically where people are going, a new data visualization
from analyst Chris Walker really makes the numbers pop. Instead of a
boring bar chart, Walker offers a dazzling pinwheel of webs between
states. Walker's version is interactive, and you should click through to
play with it, but here's a still to give you a taste:

If you want to drill down to a particular state, you can mouse over each state at Walker's site
and see individual links to other states. For instance, contra
conservative claims, not everyone in California is moving to Texas. In
fact, many Texans are moving to California, and nearly as many
Californians are moving to Washington as they are to Texas.
California does have a net outflow (not as large as New York, though)
while Texas has a net inflow (not as large as Florida, though), but that
doesn't mean California is on track to lose population, so long as
births continue to outstrip deaths there.
Atlantic Cities also has some stationary images, like the one above as well as a few individual states, as well as a brief interview with Walker.

(Click to enlarge)
Recommended reading: this Ezra Klein post
about the reality of unemployment in America today. The national
average may be three job seekers for every job opening, but for many
people it's worse than that:

Nationally, there are three job seekers for every one open
position. But because unemployment is much higher in some cities than in
others, the reality is that most people who've been unemployed for more
than 26 weeks live in areas where there are four, five, six, seven and
even eight job seekers for each open job. They're not being held back by
their unemployment checks. They're being held back by mass
unemployment.

But apparently the facts on the ground don't matter for someone with his head stuck in thick clouds of libertarian dogma.

I worked at Lululemon the year an employee
at another store was murdered by a co-worker. Here's what it was like

“The
best thing is, we’ll pay for your yoga, spinning, kickboxing — whatever!
You’ll save so much money!” said the Lululemon manager during my
interview. “Plus, you’ll be so healthy you won’t even need to worry
about health insurance!”

“Fantastic! I love exercise!” I replied,
smiling broadly and flexing slightly, hoping to land the job solely
through enthusiasm and muscle tone. I had no retail experience, but I
was tired of working at restaurants, and this seemed like a respectable
place to bide my time and the easiest way to make money while I searched
for something better. Free yoga, discounts on expensive clothes, a
prime location in Union Square. At Lululemon, salesgirls are called
educators and customers are called guests, a touch of class that helps
to justify both the $100 yoga pants and the hours of life spent selling
them.

I got the job, becoming a Lululemon educator one week after
moving to New York. It was the first real thing I’d accomplished in the
city, besides convincing an old co-counselor from camp to let me crash
on his couch in Stuytown, where I slept in a living room dominated by
games — Xbox, Wii, even an electronic putting green — belying the
serious nature of my quest for a job, a life, that mattered.

Lululemon
employee training was so tightly scheduled, I couldn’t help feeling
like I was part of something important. Ten of us, new hires from
Lululemons across Manhattan, gathered every day for about a week before
any actual work began. After group yoga, the mornings were for lectures
on willpower and videos on the importance of goal setting starring
company founder Chip Wilson (“Oh, just call him Chip,” giggled one of
the managers). Afternoons were for group folding sessions: long pants in
fourths, capris and tanks in thirds, headbands and underwear in half;
wrinkles smoothed with the flat of your hand.

Evenings were spent
poring over the required reading: Jim Collins’ corporate self-help book
“Good to Great,” which Chip was obsessed with. The message: “Good is the
enemy of great,” don’t settle for a mediocre life. “Yes! Exactly,” I
exclaimed — after all, wasn’t that why I’d left my Indiana hometown?
Being hired by Lululemon began to feel almost providential.

On the
eve of our first day on the job, all of us trainees got together for a
last hurrah in the basement of the SoHo store. We drank kombucha and ate
gluten-free, dairy-free, egg-free cookies from Whole Foods while we
crafted goal sheets: lists of our life goals for the next 10 years, to
be framed and hung on the walls of our respective stores.

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This
put me in a bit of a pickle, since my goal was to leave as soon as I
found an office job with benefits. But now Lululemon had invested so
much time in what was called my “development.” Perhaps, as my empty goal
sheet suggested, I really did need their help. After several crappy
jobs, the steadiness of 9-to-5 was appealing — not having to run around,
sweating, sucking up to people, dependent on tips — as was the idea of
helping to make something that would last. But what would that look
like? I liked to read, so I’d mostly been applying for editing
positions. But I couldn’t write down such a half-baked goal for all to
see.

Under the guise of getting another hemp-seed cookie, I leaned
over and read my neighbor’s goals: run a marathon, do yoga teacher
training, buy a country house. Easy enough. I copied her. I’d figure out
my real goals later.

The first few days of work were heady,
accompanied as they were by a flood of endorphins: spin class at 6 a.m.,
vinyasa flow at 8 p.m.; Saturday morning run clubs in the park and
Sunday morning yoga classes in the store. Exercise — what sort, how
often, the afterglow — was the main topic of in-store conversation, so
if you skipped a day it was obvious and people asked if you were feeling
OK. We were encouraged to choose our favorite method of exercise, but
it was best if it was something other people liked too, since “The team
that sweats together stays together!”

While everyone had something
else they wanted to be — their “passion” — it always seemed to fit
within the Lululemon rubric. I went on runs with Jo the marathoner who
also made handbags; spinning with Catherine the triathlete who was also a
dancer; yoga classes with Sam, who was also an actor and a
personal trainer. “I spent my life trying not to be careless,” he rasped
in his best Vito Corleone impression. “Real men stretch before they
run.”

As a group we trooped from SpinCycle to YogaWorks to
Jivamukti and back in brightly colored spandex. The instant camaraderie
was appealing. In order to fit in, I avoided my favorite vices: baked
goods, beer, Russian novels (“Such a downer!” Jo noted with an
exaggerated frown upon spying “Anna Karenina” in my cubby).

We
were positive. We were healthy. We were enthusiastic. While retail
employees at American Apparel or Forever 21 might spend their half-hour
breaks eating pizza or smoking in the alley, my co-workers and I did
sit-ups and headstands, read the self-help books in the employee
library, and talked shit about gluten. “Few people attain great lives,
in large part because it is just so easy to settle for a good life,”
Catherine might read aloud from “Good to Great” while two juice-fasting
co-workers balanced on their hands in the break room, which was really
just a fluorescent-lit corner of the stockroom

The setting left
something to be desired, but the message was enticing. Who wouldn’t want
a great life? And some days it seemed like it was really possible. At
one mandatory meeting, during which we discussed the merits of the paleo
diet over chia seed pudding, Catherine was asked to talk about her
experience with Landmark, a sort of group therapy-cum-self-help seminar
that any Lululemon employee was invited to attend, gratis, after six
months of work. A $600 life change, courtesy of Chip.

“It’s
amazing,” she said, shaking her head at the inexpressible wonder of her
own memories. “God, how do I begin? I grew so much over that weekend.
The most empowering part was, you learn that everything is a story. So,
like, if I’m sad, that’s my story. If I want to be happy, all I do is
change my story! You can make your life look however you want. It was a
huge breakthrough.”

Everyone clapped. I grimaced, feeling a rumble
in my stomach that was either chia seed pudding or anxiety. How did
everyone know exactly what they wanted their stories to be? I couldn’t
even manage an honest goal sheet. And, though I applied rather aimlessly
to two or three each day, I still hadn’t found an office job. By
Lululemon logic, this probably meant I hadn’t properly written my story.
But what should I be wanting instead?

Sam encouraged me to look
for answers in yoga teacher training. “You’ll really deepen your
practice,” he said. “And, you know, make some money.” Catherine,
meanwhile, offered a ready-made story for me to adopt as my own. “Do you
think Ocean would wear this?” she asked one day, modeling a purple
hoodie and a pair of purple-and-white stretch pants in the break room.
“Who’s Ocean?” I asked, and she sighed. “Who trained you? Ocean is our
ideal customer. She does yoga every day, makes $100,000 a year, and
dates a triathlete named Mountain.” I stared at her, nonplussed.
Pityingly, she added: “Mary, we all want to be Ocean. That’s why we work here.”
“Won’t
make $100,000 working retail,” I muttered, but fortunately she hadn’t
heard. She was searching for an Ocean-appropriate headband. That night I
sent out seven résumés: copywriter, editorial assistant, researcher,
even a handful of unpaid internships. I didn’t know what I wanted, but I
was getting a better idea of what I didn’t: to dream of a $100,000 life
while living a $15,000 one.
Tired from days of constant exercise
and nights of writing cover letters, I began to sell stretch pants in a
daze. “Yeah yeah, your butt looks great in those,” I’d mutter to the
skeletal wives of investment bankers. Two months in, my manager
questioned my commitment to the store ethos. “Your attitude isn’t as
positive and energetic as it was when you started,” she said. “Coming
here should feel like a party!” Scared of losing my job, especially now
that I’d finally found my own place, a loft share in Bushwick for $500 a
month, I assured her that it did; it really did feel like a party.

Increasingly,
I found more to dislike in the co-workers who had been my default
friends: the platitudes of Sam the yogi, dietary pressures from Jo the
paleo, Catherine’s insistence that all my problems with the new schedule
— which had me on the floor six days a week, making it harder to
schedule interviews for jobs I wasn’t qualified for anyway — were a
story that just needed to be told a different way. They in turn found me
too set in my ways, not open enough to positive change or becoming a
better me. “For a yogini you sure are inflexible,” muttered Catherine as
she folded capris in thirds.

The months went on. I worked in a
sea of brightly colored stretch pants and body dysmorphia. I sweat at
least once a day, every day. I floated from home to work and back in
increasingly stinky lycra; more and more dissatisfied, but guilty for
feeling so — the onus was on me to change my story, but I didn’t know
how. And so I remained, in stasis and spandex.

Then one afternoon I
got an email about an emergency meeting. The store was brightly lit
when I arrived at 9 p.m., high from a SpinCycle class. I sat in lotus
position like everyone else in a circle on the floor. Our manager took a
deep yogic breath and told us the news: a Lululemon educator had been
killed by burglars in a Maryland store.

She’d been closing up with another educator, and they’d both been attacked, brutalized, tied up. Only one of them had survived.

None
of us knew how to respond. We were all so jacked up on exercise that it
was actually hard to feel sad, though we did our best, holding a
candlelight vigil in Union Square. “She was one of us,” we said to each
other in shock. She had died on her way from good to great.

What it wasnot hard
to feel was scared. Running sprints in the park had strengthened our
fight or flight responses, and everyone was suddenly ultra-safety
conscious. A new rule was instated that every closing shift had to
include three people, instead of two, and always at least one male.
Everyone left at the same time and we walked each other to our trains. I
found comfort in this renewed solidarity with the very same co-workers
I’d been increasingly annoyed with. It was us against the nameless,
faceless bad guys.

A few days later I was home in my unheated
apartment, enacting what had become my nightly ritual of eating sprouted
almonds under an electric blanket while scouring online job boards,
when I heard one of four new roommates shouting my name. “Yeah?” I
shouted back.

“Dude! Did you hear the news?” Natalie, aspiring
local newscaster and general busybody, cracked open my bedroom door and
peered inside at me.

“Uh, no, I don’t think so.” Natalie stared
back at me with horror, and reflexively I lifted my arm and sniffed.
Sweating every day meant I was always a little gamey.

“That
Lululemon girl who was murdered?” she prompted, and I nodded
encouragingly, like the little boy on “Lassie” whenever she barked the
location of a missing child.

“She was killed by that other
Lululemon girl!” Natalie cried. “Read the news! It’s everywhere. Doesn’t
that just make you feel so creepy? These are your people!” She
took a step backward, out the door, as if I might jump out of bed and,
unable to control my increasingly rippling muscles, strangle her on the
spot.

I googled Lululemon. It was true: The educator did kill her
co-worker, cutting herself and tying them both up afterward to make it
look like a robbery.

In that moment, it seemed inevitable. As
educators, we were pressed to be our best selves, treat life like a
party, and never give up on greatness. If you were unhappy, angry,
paranoid, just tell a different story. The idea that you could shape
reality to look however you wanted suddenly seemed dangerous, easily
abused, especially among my Type A co-workers, who exercised and worked
and exercised and worked and ate so little that it was not really a
surprise that someone, eventually, snapped.
I wondered what had been on the murderer’s goal sheet.

The
Lululemon murder was all over the Internet: Washington Post, Huffington
Post, Slate, the Daily Mail. But for a group that liked to talk about
our feelings, the news went surprisingly undiscussed among Lululemon
staff; when anyone did talk about it, they did so in furtive, fearful
whispers. There was no emergency meeting. If we’d had one, I thought, it
probably would have felt too much like one of those murder mystery
dinner parties: Who would be the next killer?

I knew it wasn’t as
simple as all that. My co-workers were good people, if relentlessly
positive and obsessed with muscle tone. Still, I found myself avoiding
them, my heart speeding up whenever the store closed and it was just us.
Sometimes I even hid behind the mannequins to gather my courage, but
they were too slender to provide much coverage. When I raised a butter
knife to slice into a gluten-free almond banana loaf at one of the
mandatory meetings, my hand trembled. We were all tainted. Any one of us
could be the next to crack. Even me. Perhaps especially me. After all,
nobody else seemed so dissatisfied.

It didn’t take long for my
co-workers to go back to the way things had been, debating the merits of
kickboxing versus Krav Maga, chickpea flour versus almond meal. But my
folding technique grew sloppier and sloppier, and I preferred to get my
daily sweat on alone, even skipping days now and then. I also threw
myself into job applications with renewed vigor. I hadn’t known what to
do when I moved to New York, so Lululemon had seemed like a decent
option, but it didn’t feel that way anymore. The murder reminded me of
everything I’d been avoiding by hewing to the always happy Lululemon way
of life: the anxiety of choice, the fear of failure; not trying to be
Ocean but rather taking the risk to be me — baked goods, beer, downer
books and all.

About a month after the murder, we had a staff
meeting at which our manager named the next people who would be eligible
for Landmark. My name was on the list. That meant I’d been there nearly
six months. I began to cry, right there in front of everyone. My
manager took me aside and asked if I needed to talk.

She’d
prepared for an upsetting conversation, closing the office door and
placing a new box of tissues on the desk. But it was actually a relief
to hear corroboration that I wasn’t fitting in. It would have been smart
to agree to let myself get fired. I’d heard this process was slow, and I
could’ve collected two more weeks of pay and free yoga classes. I
certainly needed the money. But what I said was: “I think I just need to
quit.”

Two weeks later I’d be offered a copywriter position, one
of the many jobs I’d applied for, but for two weeks I lived a life of
uncertainty and cheap beer, anxiety and bagels. Jobless and alone in New
York City, I’d gone from good to mediocre. If we write our own stories,
this was not one to brag about. Certainly not a story Ocean would cop
to. It wasn’t perfect, but it was honest, and it was mine.

Mary Mann (@mary_e_mann) is a columnist for Bookslut. Her
work has appeared in The Hairpin, The Billfold, The Rumpus and New York
Magazine.
More Mary Mann.

About Me

New Trier High School, Winnetka Illinois.... cancer survivor...NYU Grad School of Film and TV...Film Editor....Training Audio/Visual Writer for US Coast Guard...audio visual producer and public relations writer..had some pretty awful bumps along the way (haven't we all) --glad to still be around and in touch with so many friends from the past